Texas failed to show that the new political lines were "not enacted with discriminatory purpose" when passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature, said Circuit Court Judge Thomas Griffith, writing for the three-judge panel.

Minority groups who sued the state after the Legislature pushed through the maps last year hailed the decision.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said he would "appeal this flawed decision to the U.S. Supreme Court." He claimed the panel overstepped constitutional bounds and expanded Voting Rights Act protections.

With just two months until Election Day, the fallout from the ruling is unlikely to be felt until new maps are installed for 2014. Instead, voters in Texas this November will use interim political maps drawn last year by a different three-judge panel in San Antonio. That court is handling the lawsuit filed by minority groups, while the Washington panel took up the separate issue of whether the maps met the Voting Rights Act.

Texas is one of several Southern states that must receive pre-approval, or "preclearance," from the Justice Department to any changes in voting procedures under the Voting Rights Act because of a past history of racial discrimination.

State prosecutors, however, sought preclearance through the federal court in Washington rather than through the Justice Department.

Abbott argued that the new districts did not discriminate against Hispanics or blacks, but were instead drawn to consolidate Republican power.

"Today's decision extends the Voting Rights Act beyond the limits intended by Congress and beyond the boundaries imposed by the Constitution," Abbott said.

But the three-judge panel said the state failed to uphold its legal burden to show that the new maps did not discriminate.

The Voting Rights Act allows the state to create political districts that give a majority of a minority group the opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice.

"No such surgery was performed on the districts of Anglo incumbents," Griffith wrote.

Instead, the judges noted that Republicans protected the inclusion of a San Antonio country club in the district of Rep. Lamar Smith, a Republican.

The court said "economic engines," hospitals and universities were taken out of African American congressional districts in Houston.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, scoffed at the Legislature's behavior, and applauded the ruling by the court.

The federal judges, in their ruling, said that even Texas did not dispute that the plans had a "disparate impact on the minority districts."

State lawmakers held out hope that the Supreme Court would side with Texas.

State Sen. Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo, who chaired the Senate redistricting committee which drew the new lines, said the judicial panel only found that Texas failed to prove that the maps would not discriminate.

Seliger said the ruling that the state weakened the ability of Latinos to elect a candidate of their choice "was very much in dispute and will be part and parcel of the Supreme Court case."